AKC Beginner Novice Obedience. It's the first rung on the formal obedience ladder in AKC. You must "Q" (qualify with a score of 170 or better) 3 times for your title at each level. BN is an optional titling class... if you wanted, and your dog was ready, you could go straight to Novice. But then you MUST finish Novice before doing Open, and must finish Open before doing Utility. There are some other optional titling classes in between too for people who want to do them. The optional titling classes act sort of as stepping stones between the main 3 levels.

He did wonderfully. It's been years since I did any obedience and I was surprised what little difference beginning novice and novice have (didn't have beginning years ago). Can you give treats? looked like you might have, but you could have just been adjusting your sweater

Boy, I don't know how you keep it all straight, Karen, especially between AKC and APDT. Great job once again. He's so enthusiastic. Still love the little jumps he does the best. He's just so happy to be performing.

He did wonderfully. It's been years since I did any obedience and I was surprised what little difference beginning novice and novice have (didn't have beginning years ago). Can you give treats? looked like you might have, but you could have just been adjusting your sweater

No, no treats allowed in the ring, Becky! There is no off-leash heeling in BN, and the heeling pattern isn't called. Instead, you follow signs like rally signs. But it's NOT scored like rally, it's scored like regular, obedience heeling. Kodi's heeling was good until we got to the slow. We're still working on that (and you can't see it as much from the front) but he forges quite badly in the slow.

The figure eight is exactly the same as Novice. Instead of the "Stand for exam", there is a sit for exam, where the judge just touches the dog on the head, while you stand 6' out, with the dog still on-lead. The stay is done with no other dogs in the ring, and is a "sit stay". The dog is supposed to maintain the stay while the handler walks around the perimeter of the ring. Obviously, Kodi didn't do this, though he didn't leave from the spot. Technically, my understanding is that we should have NQ'd for that, but the judge must have forgotten the rules, because she just gave me a 3 point deduction. As my trainer said, sometimes mistakes go for you and sometimes they go against you. I got lucky. The final exercise is the recall, done only half the length of the ring, and it ends with a front, no finish needed. Obviously, the other place he lost major points was there, because he jumped on me, and didn't hold the front.

But he still ended up with 190 1/2 overall, so I'm not complaining.

He is usually quite reliable about the sit and walk around, and while he USED to jump on me a lot, hasn't done that for a year now. I think the problem was that I was nervous. I don't usually get nervous about showing, but since this was our title leg, I think I was more nervous than usual, and that got him keyed up. People who watched said that in the sit, before he stood up, he was throwing a lot of stress signals... lowering his head and yawning, which is unlike him. Unfortunately, the person taping, for some reason followed ME walking around the ring, rather than the dog! As a result, we can't see what he did, and I didn't see it while I was walking the ring. Likewise, I'm sure the reason he jumped on me was that he was SO excited to be allowed to come to me that he couldn't contain himself.

Oh well, he's not quite ready for Novice yet... still not COMPLETELY ready for the long sits and downs in a group of dogs. So we'll do BN in the B class a couple more times to see if we can clean up our act a bit, and keep him in the ring!

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